Abusive or authoritarian? The elite media’s inconsistent framing of surveillance scandals

This article explores the framing practices of four elite media organisations around three recent surveillance scandals in Greece, Poland, and Spain. All three scandals revolved around the pervasive usage of spyware by one or more government agencies on high-profile domestic targets throughout the same time periods. Given these factual similarities, the article dives into the journalistic production of meaning from a comparative perspective. A qualitative content analysis of relevant news articles points to significant framing inconsistencies. The journalists and editors covering each scandal treated the common issues of legality, democracy, and domestic redress very differently from one case to another. Based on these findings and existing research, it postulates that prestigious, influential media can exert differential symbolic effects on their expert audiences, including European political elites. Similar events can be framed in contrasting ways that may (fail to) resonate with the dominant schemes of perception that structure the political field. This suggests elite media can turn comparable issues into more or less feasible objects of political contention, making them actors of dissensus in their own right.